Did Mutawakkil surrender or was he captured?

Did former Taliban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil voluntarily surrender to the U.S. military authorities in Kandahar or was he captured and handed over to the Americans?

There are no easy answers to this question concerning the highest-ranking Taliban official to fall into U.S. hands.

The news was first broken in a statement attributed to U.S. defence and intelligence officials in Washington.

It claimed Mutawakkil surrendered to U.S. military authorities in Kandahar on Friday and was being held at the city's airbase. Subsequently, another statement said Mutawakkil had presented himself to Afghan interim government authorities in Kandahar who then shifted him to the U.S. military airbase.

But Kandahar Governor Gul Agha was apparently ignorant of the happenings in his city. He told the BBC Pashto service on Saturday that he was on a visit to Pakistan along with Afghan interim leader Hamed Karzai and was, therefore, largely unaware of Mutawakkil's surrender and the conditions under which it happened.

However, he hastened to add that some of his men accompanied Mutawakkil when he turned himself over to the Americans.

On Friday, a spokesman of the Kandahar administration said he was unaware that Mutawakkil had surrendered.

Karzai added a new dimension to the mystery when he told reporters in Kabul on Saturday that his government was in touch with Mutawakkil for the past 15 days to discuss the modalities of his surrender.

The Afghan foreign minister Dr Abdullah narrated an altogether different story. Talking to reporters in Kabul on Saturday, he pointed out that Mutawakkil was in hiding in Quetta and that the Pakistan government may have cooperated in his capture.

Authorities in Pakistan were neither asked nor felt the need to comment on Mutawakkil's arrest. There were reports that the bespectacled former Taliban foreign minister was in hiding either in Quetta or Chaman. His family had been living for years in Quetta as refugees.

Pakistan had earlier arrested former Taliban ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef in Islamabad and announced his deportation after charging him with overstaying.

Subsequently, it transpired that the U.S. military authorities apprehended Zaeef and locked him at the Bagram airbase near Kabul. A few human rights activists and politicians criticised the Pakistan government for its action against Zaeef.

There were also unconfirmed reports that another Taliban leader Haji Mullah Mohammed Ahmadi, former president of the Bank Milli Afghan (Afghan National Bank) accompanied Mutawakkil when he surrendered or was captured in Kandahar.

It remains to be seen how the U.S. military authorities treat Mutawakkil.